QuoteProject
I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.
Clarice Lispector
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes the therapeutic power of writing and the enduring connection between life and death.

Clarice Lispector reflects on the profound impact that writing can have, suggesting that through her work, she attempts to preserve life and perhaps save her own spirit. The notion of life being intertwined with madness, and the living carrying the essence of the deceased, highlights the complex relationship between existence, creativity, and mortality.

Themes

WritingLifeDeathMadnessCreativity

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of creative expression, one might quote Lispector to underscore writing's power.

More from Clarice Lispector

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
Clarice LispectorRead
A horse is freedom so indominable that it becomes useless to imprison it to serve man: it lets itself be domesticated, but with a simple, rebellious toss of the head-shaking its mane like an abundance of free-flowing hair-it shows that its inner nature is always wild, translucent and free.
Clarice LispectorRead
The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.
Clarice LispectorRead
Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.
Clarice LispectorRead
I work only with lost and founds.
Clarice LispectorRead
Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed
Clarice LispectorRead

Similar quotes

What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
Jacques AttaliRead
The most important part of fashion photography, for me, is not the models; it's not the clothes. It's that you are responsible for defining what a woman today is. That, I think, is my job.
Peter LindberghRead
I am not of the vein of actors - and I will not pretend to be one - that takes my character home with me. I don't.
Leonardo DicaprioRead
Theatre is fake... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
Marina AbramovicRead
I've come to understand that art is awesome and beautiful because it's a reflection of life - but it's just a reflection, and the real thing is my daughter.
Chance The RapperRead
When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can't write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the 'i's' small.
Charles BukowskiRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.